High Court rules Parades Commission Erred in Blocking Drumcree March

From ‘The Belfast Telegraph‘

A decision to bar the Orange Order from part of the flashpoint Drumcree marching route is to be quashed, a High Court judge declared today.The outcome was reached after the Parades Commission conceded a procedural error in how it dealt with an annual application for permission to walk along the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown…The Orange Order is now expected to make a fresh application for permission to parade on the contentious route for the first time in a generation.

Posting on Facebook, DUP MP Carla Lockhart wrote the following

Today is a massive moment for Portadown District, for unionism and for loyalism. I couldn’t be prouder to stand with them. The next chapter of Drumcree is about to be written. There is no rational or legal basis for the continued prohibition of this traditional church parade.

It’s a technicality. The Parades Commission will merely need to show greater care in how they draft future rulings. The ruling does *not* mean a loyalist parade will happen any more than it means a Republican parade in Edgarstown or down the Shankill Road will happen.

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